By GARRET JAROS/YachatsNews
The growing special service district that provides water to 1,400 customers from Yachats to south Waldport is embarking on more than $6 million in infrastructure projects to repair valves and replace miles of deteriorating pipes.
While much of the work is being done via grants and low-interest loans, the Southwest Lincoln County Water Public Utility District’s board was also forced to raise water rates in July by 12 percent to help pay for the projects as well as aging equipment.
Most residents, whose houses have a ¾-inch water line, will pay a $1.53 daily rate with an average monthly bill between $50 and $55.
“Everything has gotten more and more expensive,” said district manager Tui Anderson. “And we needed to raise rates to prepare for these projects. We’ve had a lot of old equipment that needed to be upgraded. And then we have lots of work, maintenance stuff, that needs to be done within our water plant.”
The Southwest Lincoln County Water District has received several grants that it will combine with loans to upgrade its infrastructure. It also received a $50,000 renewable energy planning grant from the Oregon Department of Energy.
The first “emergency” project the district will begin in coming weeks is replacing failing bolts on valves from a water line installed in 1997. Despite being up to specifications at the time, the bolts are not stainless steel so they are corroding and basically melting, Anderson said.
“We’ve had a couple of valve failures with the tops of the valves popping off,” he said.
A grant from Business Oregon, which distributes money provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for such projects, will pay for half of the $550,000 project, with the other half coming from a 30-year loan with a 1 percent interest rate.
The PUD also has a $6 million water-line replacement project coming up.
“That’s throughout the district in various areas where we have old water lines that were installed back in the ’50s or ’60s,” Anderson said.
The old lines, which are made of brittle asbestos (which does not go into the water or became a health risk until it’s airborne) concrete will be replaced with a black poly pipe that is tough and seismic resilient.
“We have some areas throughout the system where the water lines are too small or have dead ends,” Anderson said. “And we’re going to address some various issues to help with fire flow, pressure and capacity. And we’ll be able to install new fire hydrants within that too, which is always good.”
The project will be the first in the state, through Business Oregon, that is underwritten by the 2021 Federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. Again, half will be covered by an EPA grant while the other half is a 30-year, 1 percent loan.
The resiliency grant from ODE will be used to look into solar panels and in-line water turbines that will produce energy from the flow of water through pipes. Southwest Lincoln currently pays about $26,000 a year for electricity.
Talks with Yachats
Southwest Lincoln provides water to customers through a network of approximately 37 miles of water lines. Its service area is as far north as the Hilltop Café-Bistro, Waldport High School and Waldport Industrial Park, and as far south as the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District station.
Southwest Lincoln has two water treatment plants and draws water from Starr, Vingie, Big and Dicks Fork creeks.
“Our streams get low usually toward the end of summer,” Anderson said. “And that’s about as much as the drought affects us. Because as soon as it starts raining again, we have more water than we know what to do with.”
The water tank at Blodgett the treatment plant holds a million gallons and the one at Dicks Fork 200,000 gallons. But the PUD is proposing replacing the latter with a 500,000-gallon tank. If Waldport extends the sewer line to the industrial park it would likely spur that project, Anderson said.
The biggest individual water users are Angell Job Corps, campgrounds, the Tiny Tranquility housing community and Waldport High/Middle School.
Yachats city officials are also looking at the district as a possible source of water during late summer when the two creeks it relies on, Reedy and Salmon, dip to levels that require water restrictions.
“I talked with Tui (Anderson) last week,” said Yachats water plant operator Rick McClung, who also works for Southwest Lincoln one day a week. “And we’re going to start setting up a stream monitoring survey on their creeks to measure them throughout this drought.”
While some Southwest Lincoln customers have expressed concern that adding Yachats on to the system would increase rates even further, Anderson said that is not the case.
“If anything, it would potentially be the opposite,” Anderson said. “And our district customers will always come first and would not be impacted.”
If an agreement was reached between the district and Yachats, the city could access water immediately through an existing manual pump system, but that would involve a lot of staff time, McClung said. It would take a couple of years to fully automate the system.
- Garret Jaros is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com